Henry Lopez (center) is pictured at home with (from left) his mother Emerita, his brother William, his sister Yuri and his father Arnoldo. Henry, who was selected as the Boys & Girls Clubs Youth of the Year for District of Columbia and Commonwealth of Virginia, credits his parents and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Fairfax with helping him realize his dreams.

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With help of Boys & Girls Clubs, local immigrant student receives full college scholarship.

Today, Henry Lopez has a bright future, complete with a full scholarship to college. It wasn’t always that way, however, and he remembers being a preschool student in a foreign country, unfamiliar with the language and culture, fighting to learn, to fit in, to avoid falling into a gang.